We need more voters, and so we need to make it easier for more people. Although as someone who has voted by mail for probably 20 years I have don’t see how it could get any easier.
But…I would propose making election day a national holiday. I would register everyone thru some government office, be it the DMV, the Postal Service, the Neighborhood Grocery store etc. High schools and college should require students to register upon turning 18. And I don’t know if this is a real thing or not but registering to vote should not get your name on potential jury lists. Every kid I know says that is one reason they don’t register.
Your “subscription” model gives a huge advantage to incumbents. Right now people have to remember to vote their guy back into office for yet another term. Even so, challengers are rarely successful. With your system, incumbents will barely need to campaign.
The renewal reminders makes it even worse. If I get repeated reminders to do something or lose my privileges, I am going to click whatever it it takes to make the reminder go away. And I am going to ignore any wall of text that stands in my way. See: TOS updates. (I’m assuming you intend a simple electronic implementation. Because if people have to regularly mail in a form or fill out paperwork to maintain voter eligibility, then that’s basically voter suppression).
I think you are assuming that giving people the option to register a vote long before Election Day would improve participation. But I don’t think so. If you have a strong opinion regarding your Congressional rep in January, you are very likely to vote in November. If you would actually read those political bios that would be regularly sent to you, you are definitely going to vote in November.
The people who don’t bother to vote in November aren’t going to give a crap about politics in January.
There’s no reason the simple cases couldn’t be handled with an app. Some cases of registration could also be handled that way too and more people would do it. But there’s no motivation for in-power politicians to make voting easier; that’s just signing up for more opponents.
This really is an absolute must to me. Many states have dictated employers set time aside, but it can be quite limited when they do and in most states it’s unpaid, of course.
Well, you could always require people to update their vote once a year - the idea wasn’t to allow you to leave your vote on auto-pilot, it was to allow you to formally withdraw support when you become dissatisfied.
What is your basis for this assertion? Polling data basically refutes this claim - whenever some new story paints a politician in a particularly good or bad light, their support rises or falls in tracking polls. When there’s a stretch with no big stories, the support reverts towards the mean. The typical explanation for this is that people who are fired up by a story are more likely to respond to polls, and people who are disheartened by it are less likely to respond. Those attitudes don’t last, though, and by Election day everything is at such a fever pitch that most people are simply overwhelmed. So why wouldn’t it be better to encourage a more deliberate approach. Allow people to send in an answer when they feel strongly, then send in a different one if they change their mind.
There are lot more people with political opinions than people who actually wait in line to vote on Election day. Perhaps the bigger culprit is the winner-take-all EV distribution, but forcing people to show up at a polling place during a single specific workday can’t help.
Or vote by mail like Oregon and Washington, or do unlimited absentee voting. Holidays are nice but there are other ways to make voting easily accessible to the busy.
This stuff ignores a basic, central point: Republicans don’t want more people to vote. Their entire strategy is built around neutralizing the majority against them.
I’d certainly include those as well, although they only passively encourage turnout instead of actively (and despite our idiocy, I believe only the electorate has the ability to save ourselves).
What difference does it make to force someone to physically go somewhere to vote when we’re in a time where a number of people don’t want to go to the store to even buy things. It’s convenient and it doesn’t require missed work or long lines or humane managers.
Most the states force people to go to the polls physically. Going to mail, ballot drop-off, removes that force part. The force is the physical part, not the voting part… aka mail-ballots remove the force, or the necessity if you prefer, to physically go somewhere.
No. I did not. I am focusing on the emphasis that passive encouragement, or ease, is somehow less than active. Most the country forces the inconvenience of the voting system, makes voting a more active choice than it needs to be.
Put another way, just because it’s active doesn’t mean it’s better. If someone wants to spend two minutes voting, that’s up to them. We should still make it easy for them to vote. Getting people engage is not really a requirement.
Ah, so it’s a misunderstanding on this word; I don’t mean active as in physical activity. I mean active as in people get to say, “Oh, hey - we get to have the next day off to vote!” instead of only getting a piece of mail (which would be passive).
I hold no ill will toward you, Nesrie, but I have to say I was about to fly off the handle with the accusation that seemed to imply I don’t care for the elderly and infirmed. I volunteer to help them on the weekends, and that was a bridge too far for me to accept proverbially sitting down.
Oh heck no. I didn’t mean to imply that. I just thought you were discounting the power of passive in favor of active too much. I think we’d see a huge uptick in participation if everything was just easier is all.
While I understand your argument and agree that having to get into your car and drive to a polling place is pretty unnecessary in this day and age, voting should be an active choice. And it is obvious now based on the numbers that actually register and do vote that for many it is not an active choice.
The Dems really do need to yell that out as loudly as possible to all those who complain about Trump now but didn’t feel the need to vote in the last election.
You vote because sometimes shit happens, as it did in 2016.
Well you still have to fill it out, fill in the bubbles and mail it or drop it off at the ballot. So it doesn’t remove all the actions, but it does remove most the inconvenience. If someone gets their ballot in the mail and trashes it or just puts it at the bottom of some stack to forget, well not much you can do about that. We’re just making it easier for everyone to choose to participate.
The only argument I’ve heard against mail ballot is the one that’s been proven false over and over again, large voter fraud.
Trying to get people to vote in general.
If given the choice between making the act of voting easier or trying to convince people to vote, I think the effort should be placed in the former for the areas that don’t have the convenience. In the areas that already have that ease, sure, put resources into that.
It doesn’t matter if someone is angry, hopeful, informed enough to vote right now if their manager won’t give them 3 hours to stand in line and they’re too afraid to complain about it because they need that job.
